300 Prequel Could Have Gerard Butler & Lena Headey

It's possible that upcoming prequel, 300: Battle of Artemisia could see the return of two of the original film's stars, Gerard Butler as King Leonidas and Lena Headey as Queen Gorgo.

In an interview with Movies.com, producer, Bernie Goldmann dropped some details on the film, which at one time had been said to focus on Persian overloard, Xerxes. Based on what Goldmann is saying, we may actually be looking at film that shifts focus to a new group of protagonists during a time period not too long before the fateful events of 300 in which the Spartan army brandished their swords and oiled, defined abs towards a vastly outnumbered battle with the Persian Army.

What should we expect?

According to Goldmann:

“It’s a different story," he said. "[However] there’s a small part for Lena [Headey]. There’s a small part for Gerry [Butler].”

He would go on to explain the logic behind starting completely anew with a cast that is unrecognizable by design.

“When you make a period movie like that, it’s great not to know the actors,” Goldmann explained. “For me, as an audience, it always brings me into the movie more. You can’t see Tom Cruise in a historical movie. You go, ‘That’s Tom Cruise!’”

However, at the end of the day, the film will ultimately be injected with the same stylistic, over-the-top violence and extreme cinematography as the Zack Snyder-directed original film. New director, Noam Murro will be looking to continue this theme, which serves a purpose for the film's tone as a purposefully-exaggerated, tall-tale recount straight from the mouth of a storyteller. As Goldmann comments:

“The cool thing about 300 was that our point-of-view going into that movie was we don’t have to be historically accurate and we created an incredible amount of freedom in telling a war story.”

He continued, “It became a movie about telling the story to the truth before you go fight a battle and when you tell that story, you’re going to exaggerate because you want to get men fired up to go kill. So you could make the movie operatic.”

So, it seems that Gerard Butler may have to start doing some serious sets of crunches again. (As some may recall, he wore "ab-armor" to cover up when he appeared as Leonidas in a 2009 Saturday Night Live sketch.) And it certainly appears that we'll be back into the pseudo-historical world of slow-motion, half-naked decapitations by the time the film hits theaters some time in 2013.